xcessive beauty and
richness. No part of Bengal or Zanzibar could excel it in either
respect; and my men, with one voice, exclaimed, "Ah, what people
these Waganda are!" and passed other remarks, which may be abridged as
follows:--"They build their huts and keep their gardens just as well as
we do at Unguja, with screens and enclosures for privacy, a clearance in
front of their establishments, and a baraza or reception-hut facing the
buildings. Then, too, what a beautiful prospect it has!--rich marshy
plains studded with mounds, on each of which grow the umbrella cactus,
or some other evergreen tree; and beyond, again, another hill-spur such
as the one we have crossed over." One of king Mtesa's uncles, who had
not been burnt to death by the order of the late king Sunna on
his ascension to the throne, was the proprietor of this place, but
unfortunately he was from home. However, his substitute gave me his
baraza to live in, and brought many presents of goats, fowls, sweet
potatoes, yams, plantains, sugarcane, and Indian corn, and apologised in
the end for deficiency in hospitality. I, of course, gave him beads in
return.

Continuing over the same kind of ground in the next succeeding spurs
of the streaky red-clay sandstone hills, we put up at the residence of
Isamgevi, a Mkungu or district officer of Rumanika's. His residence was
as well kept as Mtesa's uncle's; but instead of a baraza fronting his
house, he had a small enclosure, with three small huts in it, kept apart
for devotional purposes, or to propitiate the evil spirits--in short,
according to the notions of the place, a church. This officer gave me a
cow and some plantains, and I in return gave him a wire and some beads.
Many mendicant women, called by some Wichwezi, by others Mabandwa, all
wearing the most fantastic dresses of mbugu, covered with beads, shells,
and sticks, danced before us, singing a comic song, the chorus of which
was a long shrill rolling Coo-roo-coo-roo, coo-roo-coo-roo, delivered as
they came to a standstill. Their true functions were just as obscure as
the religion of the negroes generally; some called them devil-drivers,
other evil-eye averters; but, whatever it was for, they imposed a tax
on the people, whose minds being governed by a necessity for making some
self-sacrifice to propitiate something, they could not tell what, for
their welfare in the world, they always gave them a trifle in the same
way as the East Indians do their fakirs